For years, old wood carver Mr. Meacham (Robert Redford) has delighted children in the sleepy town of Millhaven with his tales of the fierce dragon that resides deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest.
To his daughter, Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), who works as a forest ranger in these very woods, his stories are tall tales–until she meets Pete (Oakes Fegley). Pete is a mysterious 10-year-old with no family and no home, who claims to live in the woods with a giant green dragon named Elliott, who seems remarkably similar to the fabled dragon from Meacham’s stories.
As Grace slowly begins to earn Pete’s trust, opening his eyes to the possibility that there is a world beyond his forest, his presence causes Grace to take a look at her own life, including her relaƟ onship with Jack (Wes Bentley), who owns the local lumber mill. Jack wants to support Grace’s endeavors to study and protect the surrounding woods but needs to focus on keeping his company profi table at the same Ɵ me, and it is driving a wedge between them.
When Pete’s idyllic life with Elliot in the forest is in danger, Grace, along with the help of Jack’s 11-year-old daughter Natalie (Oona Laurence), sets out to uncover the truth about this dragon and determine where Pete came from…and where he belongs.
A reimagining of Disney’s cherished family film, “Pete’s Dragon” is directed by David Lowery from a screenplay by Lowery & Toby Halbrooks based on a screenplay by Malcolm Marmorstein.
It is produced by Jim Whitaker, with Barrie M. Osborne serving as exec-producer.
The 1977 Movie
In 1977, Walt Disney Studios released the live-ac on/animated musical “Pete’s Dragon,” the endearing tale of a young boy and his friendship with an animated, green dragon, starring Mickey Rooney, Helen Reddy, Red Buttons and Shelley Winters.
Disney had been eager for some me to introduce “Pete’s Dragon” to a whole new genera on of fi lm goer’s and brought on producer Jim Whitaker (“The Finest Hours,” “Friday Night Lights”), whose produc on company is based at the studio, to shepherd the project. “There are so many people who grew up with the original fi lm, and the idea of that movie became a leaping-off point for us,” says Whitaker. “We knew that this very simple idea about a boy and his dragon s ll had the poten al to become a really special fi lm.”
Whitaker and the studio began looking for possible screenwriters to come up with a fresh take on the story and were considering writer/director David Lowery, whose powerful short fi lm, “Pioneer,” screened at the Sundance Film Fes val in 2011, garnering him accolades for his skills as a storyteller. When Lowery’s feature fi lm, “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” an intense drama set in Texas in the ‘70s starring Casey Affl eck, Ben Foster and Rooney Mara, premiered at Sundance in 2013 and was enthusias cally received by audiences and cri cs alike, they began to see him as a possible director as well.
While Lowery may not have seemed the obvious choice to write and direct a new vision of a beloved Disney fi lm, there are actually some similari es between his fi rst feature and “Pete’s Dragon.” Both stories deal with a sense of belonging, and in Pete’s case, a sense of family. Adds Whitaker, “There’s also a purity to both fi lms and the wonderment of seeing things through the eyes of a child, and we thought David would be able to create a new, simple, yet pure, take on the story.”
As a child, Lowery was a fan of the classic Disney fi lms (“Pinocchio” was the fi rst fi lm he saw in a theater), as they appealed to his sense of adventure. But Disney was not looking for the new “Pete’s Dragon” to have any direct associa on with the original, other than the tle and basic premise; They were looking for someone to come up with a totally original story and new characters.
Lowery and his wri ng partner, Toby Halbrooks, have always been drawn to projects that have a certain naiveté and innocence about them, and they were excited by the possibili es. “Pete’s Dragon” turned out to be perfectly tailored to their sensibili es as writers. “I loved the idea of making a movie that deals with imagina on and has a degree of fantasy,” Lowery says, “And there was no need to even think about reinven ng the wheel when that wheel func oned so perfectly well.”
“There’s a process to developing a movie where you go through a series of dra s, but honestly, from the fi rst dra , actually the fi rst 20 pages, we knew the movie was there,” says Whitaker. “David was a er a sense of, what he calls, ‘magical realism,’ and that came through because he allowed magic to seep into the script in unexpected ways.”
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Many of Disney’s classic fi lms like “Dumbo” and “Bambi” convey important issues to children and help prepare them with the tools and guidance to deal with those issues in their own lives. “Our story asks a fundamental ques on: where does one belong, “Lowery says.
With a fi nished screenplay in hand, Lowery began to set his sights on direc ng, and what he envisioned was a classic movie that would capture the feeling of what it meant to be young. “When you’re 10 years old everything you do seems like an epic adventure,” he says. “You don’t have to be riding on the back of a dragon…just the simple act of climbing a tree is exhilara ng for kids.”
THE CASTING
Bryce Dallas Howard’s journey with “Pete’s Dragon” is almost as magical as the fi lm itself. The actress, whose credits include “The Village,” “The Help” and last summer’s blockbuster “Jurassic World,” among others, thinks of the original “Pete’s Dragon” as a fundamental part of her childhood.
“It was one of my favorite fi lms as a child,” Howard says. “One of my earliest memories of watching a movie is watching ‘Pete’s Dragon.’ There’s something singular about that fi lm…I don’t know what it is, but it immediately touches the inner child in me.”
So when producer Jim Whitaker, whom Howard has known for a long me and considers a very dear friend, called her to discuss the fi lm, it was almost too good to be true. Whitaker was thinking of her for the role of Grace, the forest ranger and daughter to Mr. Meacham who is ini ally skep cal as to Pete’s claim that his friend Elliot is a dragon, and wanted her to meet with director David Lowery.
Howard was already familiar with Lowery’s work, calling “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” a “fantas c movie, and a really nuanced, impressionis c, sophis cated fi lm as well,” and was thrilled to hear he was a ached to the project. “Just thinking about what someone like David could bring to a story like this, elevated everything even more,” she says.
A er mee ng with Lowery, she was heartened to learn that this “Pete’s Dragon” would be not so much a remake, but a fi lm which would complement the original. “I loved the tone of the script, and David was not looking to step on people’s memories of the fi rst fi lm, but wanted to create a fi lm that could stand side by side with the original,” she says.
Howard con nues, “It is a smart, family fi lm but it’s also a compelling adventure, too, and I believe audiences are craving a family fi lm that’s smart and emo onally engaging. The best Disney fi lms are cathar c and feature characters that start with nothing and end up receiving more than they could ever have hoped for, and they provide children with opportuni es to process diffi cult feelings, which this fi lm does as well.”
“What David really understood about the fi lm, is that it had these sophis cated themes running throughout but
4
also had a storyline, which, at its essence, wasn’t necessarily all fun and laughter and music,” Howard says. “But from that kind of realism and from that very real loss that Pete has experienced can come healing, as well as a journey and an adventure that does have fun and does have beauty and friendship and family in it.”
Howard had numerous conversa ons with Lowery about how to give her part resonance, and together they realized that while Pete is embarking on a journey, Grace is on her own journey as well: a journey to fi nd who she was as a child and to reconnect with that me in her life. “Pete is searching for a home but doesn’t know where it is exactly, and Grace’s friendship with Pete helps her to reconnect with her father and to begin to visualize herself with a family of her own,” she says, “And I just found that to be a really beau ful balance.”
For the crucial role of Pete, the young boy found in the woods who was separated from his parents six years ago, the fi lmmakers were looking to cast a boy with natural ac ng abili es who could let his guard down and just be a kid. Cas ng director Debra Zane (“Skyfall,” “The Hunger Games,” “American Beauty”) conducted a worldwide cas ng search and saw thousands and thousands of kids, which eventually led her to 12-year-old Oakes Fegley from Pennsylvania.
The young actor already had a number of credits under his belt, including recurring roles on the TV series “Boardwalk Empire” and “Person of Interest” and in the feature fi lm “This Is Where I Leave You,” but that’s not what appealed to Lowery.
“I’m a big believer that there’s a me and place and a type of fi lm when you want a child who can actually perform Shakespeare or cry on command,” he says. “But the types of fi lms I like to make are really more about le ng kids be kids, so I was looking for kids who didn’t have any pretenses or who liked to show off or try to impress me, but who could just be themselves.”
Zane had been raving about Fegley, but Lowery was hesitant to get his hopes up. He watched his tapes and even though he was s ll undecided, agreed to meet with the young actor in person. Lowery went to New York and the moment Fegley walked into the room, he knew they had found their Pete. “He just had that something,” Lowery says. “I can’t describe it, but there was something so real about him.”
Pete has always assumed he understands how the world works. What memories he does have are linked to a torn and ba ered children’s book, Elliot Gets Lost, which he reads over and over again, but when he learns that the world is actually much bigger and much more complex than he ever imagined, he begins to ques on his place in the world, and it was a character that appealed to Fegley immediately.
“Pete is really curious and he likes to ask a lot of ques ons, like me, and even though he doesn’t have the intelligence of a normal 10-year-old boy, he is smart in other ways,” explains Fegley. “He knows how to survive
5
in the forest but has no idea how to live in the civilized world.”
He conƟ nues, “Pete only trusts Elliot, and in a way, Elliot knows where Pete really belongs. At fi rst Pete thinks he belongs with Elliot, but when he sees how nice some humans can be, like Grace, he gets very confused. He doesn’t want to leave Elliot though, because he loves him like a brother and a father all in one.”
Co-screenwriter Toby Halbrooks says, “Grace is the embodiment of family and motherhood and Pete sees that she is tender and smart, so if anyone could convince Pete to leave the forest and choose to have a human family of his own, it is her.”
As with the character of Pete, Lowery was looking for someone who could give a natural, believable performance to play Natalie, and they found that in 14-year-old Oona Laurence. While the young actress is a Tony Award® winner for her work in “MaƟ lda the Musical” and has starred opposite Jake Gyllenhaal and Rachel McAdams in “Southpaw,” she was a kid who sƟ ll acts like a kid, even when the cameras weren’t rolling.
“We never got the sense that Oona was giving a performance,” says Whitaker. “She was totally natural but at the same Ɵ me, completely professional, and both she and Oakes always came to set prepared and when it was Ɵ me to work, focused on the work at hand.”
When Pete meets Natalie in the forest, he senses that she is someone he can trust. “Pete thinks that she’s really nice and because she’s so nice they become friends and have lots of adventures together,” Fegley says.
Adds Laurence, “Natalie doesn’t have as many friends as most kids, so when she fi nds Pete and they become friends she gets really excited. She’s kind of a dork and a liƩ le bit of a tomboy and is kind of lonely, like Pete, but she also understands Elliot, like Pete does.”
As a result of Lowery’s associaƟ on with the Sundance Film FesƟ val and InsƟ tute on his fi rst two fi lms, he had been working with founder Robert Redford to develop several fi lm projects and menƟ oned the role of Mr. Meacham to him.
“The dragon is a symbolic creature from mythology and mythology was a big deal for me as a kid growing up, so I’m a big believer in its importance,” says Redford. “I grew up in a working class environment where there were not a lot of opƟ ons for entertainment, so you had to kind of create your own. And it was about a greater world and greater characters and greater creatures than I knew, so therefore, it was very, very aƩ racƟ ve to me.”
Residents of Millhaven have always viewed Mr. Meacham as the eccentric outsider who will talk to anyone about the dragon he once saw in the woods, but he is not crazy. Redford explains, “He’s the only person to have claimed that he’s seen the dragon…nobody believes him, but they like him and he’s a part of the community. He’s isolated, not because he’s an outlaw, but because he believes in magic, and I thought that was a wonderful character to have in a fi lm.”
6
Redford conƟ nues, “I’m a storyteller, and I believe in storytelling, so I told my kids stories. I think it’s really invaluable. In fact, I think ‘once upon a Ɵ me’ is one of the greatest phrases imaginable. When you’re a kid and you hear ‘once upon a Ɵ me,’ it’s ‘ah, I’m going to get something now.’”
The screen legend, who has appeared in such classic fi lms as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Way We Were,” “The SƟ ng” and “All the President’s Men,” has been very selecƟ ve in recent years as to the roles he chooses, so Lowery and Halbrooks tailored the part to fi t Redford’s strengths as an actor, which encouraged him to commit to the role.
“I think the story craŌ ed here is very human and quite interesƟ ng,” says Redford. “It is an inƟ mate story of a father, a daughter and a boy who has survived an accident and gone into the woods, and it has a lot of magic, but at its core, it’s a very emoƟ onal, human story.”
Lowery, who credits Redford for helping nurture his talents as a fi lmmaker, says, “Working with him and having him in your fi lm is such an honor, and it’s something I have never taken lightly. He is disarmingly relaxed and cool and game for anything, and there was no sense of pretenƟ on on his part, ever. He was there to roll up his sleeves and do whatever I asked of him.”
Wes Bentley (“American Horror Story: Hotel,” “The Hunger Games”) was cast as Jack, the owner of the local lumber mill who is in a relaƟ onship with Grace. The idea of a forest ranger daƟ ng someone who destroys the very woods in which she works and the dichotomy it created, appealed to the actor, as it dealt with an issue that is, in fact, a real problem in the world.
“I think there is a middle ground between industry and environment, and the movie alludes to a Ɵ me when environmental awareness was beginning to gain momentum,” says Bentley.
New Zealand naƟ ve Karl Urban (the “Star Trek” fi lms, “The Lord of the Rings” fi lms) came on board as Gavin, Jack’s brother, who also works at the lumber mill, and is both the bad guy and a source of some comic relief. Gavin is out to make money, and that means harvesƟ ng as much lumber as possible. He means well, but goes about doing things the wrong way, so when he sees Elliot with his own eyes, he thinks he may have fi nally found a soluƟ on to his problems.
“Gavin lives in the shadow of his older brother and thinks capturing Elliot will be his meal Ɵ cket and his claim to fame,” says Urban, “But in all honesty, he really has no idea what to do with a dragon.”
7
THE PRODUCTION
With the cast in place, the fi lmmakers proceeded to assemble a crea ve team, lining up an impressive group of ar sts, including: Bojan Bazelli, ASC, as director of photography; Jade Healy as produc on designer; Amanda Neale as costume designer; Lisa Zeno Churgin, A.C.E., as editor; Daniel Hart as composer; and Eric Saindon as visual eff ects supervisor.
As a fi lm, “Pete’s Dragon” is meless, both visually and narra vely. There are no indica ons as to when the story takes place, which was always writer/director David Lowery’s inten on. “I fi nd that the movies that I return to and that I love the most, are the ones that don’t feel dated…fi lms that endure because they don’t root themselves in a specifi c me,” he says. “So by just se ng this story in the past and not making a big deal out of it, it makes everything congeal into this cohesive hole that doesn’t have a literal date on it but that feels like just yesterday.”
In the fi c onal town of Millhaven, there are no cell phones, no internet and no computers. The cars, clothes, furnishings and even the food, are from a me in our past, but are all things that have long shelf lives in terms of availability and recogni on.
This gave Lowery the ability to introduce the character of Elliot minutes into the fi lm without having to rely on the tradi onal narra ve structure. “It puts you in the mindset of, ‘Ok, this is a world where a dragon exists in the woods,’ and you accept it—or it’s easier to accept—because there are no visual clues that make the viewer say, ‘Hey, why doesn’t someone take out their phone and take a picture,’” says Lowery.
While the se ng for “Pete’s Dragon” is a town somewhere in the Pacifi c Northwest of the United States, the fi lmmakers chose to shoot in New Zealand, as they found it to look a bit more magical. A country off the coast of Australia in the South Pacifi c Ocean, New Zealand is made up of two islands, the North Island and the South Island.
New Zealand has a diverse topography, a variety of diff erent climates and a wealth of experienced fi lm crews, and it is also home to Weta Digital, the Academy Award®-winning visual eff ects company tasked with bringing Elliot to life on screen.
For execu ve producer Barrie M. Osborne, who shot all three “The Lord of the Rings” fi lms in New Zealand and won an Oscar® for the third fi lm, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” it was the perfect loca on. “Between the manpower and the people that I’ve worked with and the organiza onal ability and the infrastructure of New Zealand, it had everything we needed,” he says.
8
Lowery likes things to be real, and because this fi lm was already going to have a giant CG dragon, he wanted everything else to look as real as possible. “The movie takes place in a very realis c world but we’ve heightened it just a bit to capture the magic of a child’s perspec ve of the world,” says Lowery. “We wanted the trees to be a li le bit taller, the sun a bit brighter and the wind to have that sort of magical quality, and we found that just walking out the door in New Zealand.”
Most of the story takes place in the forests, and the trees in New Zealand are quite similar in appearance to those found in the Pacifi c Northwest. In the years following World War II, a number of lumber mills in the U.S. shut down and were reconstructed in New Zealand, and thousands of Douglas Firs from Oregon and Redwoods from California were planted there as a result. The North Island now has more than 200,000 acres of pine forests, which enabled the produc on to create a number of diff erent landscapes.
Principal photography on “Pete’s Dragon” commenced in January, 2015 in and around Wellington on the North Island. In Ngongotaha just north of the Rotorua Redwood Forest, an older, small house in the midst of a residen al neighborhood doubled for the home of Mr. Meacham.
Coincidentally, and fortuitously enough, the home was owned by a re red logger who also happened to be a woodcarver and had sharpened knife blades adorning his property, which the art department kept in place as set decora on.
Exteriors for Jack and Natalie’s home were fi lmed in the Birchville sec on of Upper Hu located north of Wellington. The home’s interiors were built on soundstages at Stone St. Studios, also in Wellington, and were styled as if the house had been passed down through genera ons. “My thinking on decora ng the inside of the house was that it was a house that was built with lumber from the mill and that Jack’s grandparents owned it, so the stuff in there had been in the family for years,” says Healy. “Crew people would walk in and say ‘Oh, my grandmother had this’ or ‘my parents had this,’ so it was defi nitely a mix of styles and eras.”
One loca on, McLaren Falls on the North Island, was so remote that helicopters were needed to transport camera equipment to set. The cast and crew meanwhile, had to walk more than 400 yards across enormous boulders just to reach base camp, but while diffi cult to reach, the se ng itself was amazingly beau ful, and one that Lowery couldn’t imagine not using.
To create the se ng for Pete and Elliot’s home in the midst of the forest, the produc on used a number of diff erent se ngs. Some scenes were fi lmed in the Rotorua Redwood Forest and others near the well-known Mount Victoria lookout in Wellington, a beau ful forest full of old, large pine trees, and s ll others outside the
9
town of Tokoroa in the Kinleith Forest. In addiƟ on, a set of the forest, which included the tree fort where Pete and Elliot live, was built within a green screen environment at Stone St. Studios.
Healy explains, “Once we seƩ led on the locaƟ on we had to survey it and make a 3D model before we could begin to build a physical set to scale on the stages. We built the tree fort in three large pieces and then had it shipped to the forest and installed, so it was really a technical challenge.”
“We wanted to create a tree fort that would make every kid want to have one in their own backyard,” says Healy. “SomeƟ mes you see these fantasƟ cal sets that are so unrealisƟ c that there’s no way a kid can imagine having that in real life, but David always wanted the tree to be very organic so that it was something Pete could have actually built.”
The upper reaches of the tree were ulƟ mately composited together by Weta Digital, as it would have been logisƟ cally impossible to build something that large.
The small town of Tapanui on the South island, which producƟ on designer Jade Healy (“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”) stumbled upon by accident, became the story’s fi cƟ onal Millhaven, and the Blue Mountain Timber Mill fi ve miles away, which was no longer in operaƟ on, became Jack and Gavin’s lumber mill.
“We used the mill as if it was a studio backlot,” says Osborne. “It had everything we needed in one place. We did have to do some set dressing, but the locaƟ on allowed us to fi lm all the big acƟ on sequences there very conveniently.”
Cinematographer Bojan Bazelli (“The Lone Ranger,” “The Ring”), shot with Alexa cameras during principal photography so as to best capture the majesƟ c trees that populate New Zealand. “The light, which is noƟ ceably disƟ nct, gave the scenes in the redwood forests a majesty we would not have goƩ en elsewhere,” he says.
Principal photography on “Pete’s Dragon” wrapped in April, 2015, and according to Lowery, something special took place during that Ɵ me. He explains. “When we were ediƟ ng the movie, I would be watching the footage of Pete running through the woods and it just had this incredibly special feeling to it. It was almost surreal, but was just incredibly magic and beauƟ ful.”
CREATING ELLIOT
The existence of mythical creatures known as dragons date back to 4000 B.C. Stories which feature dragons have appeared throughout history in fairy tales, myths and folk lore, and most cultures have their own beliefs as to what dragons symbolize.
10
Because dragons are o en depicted as vicious, scaly, lizard-like creatures and rarely shown as approachable, friendly or heroic, Elliot’s appearance and personality were the focus of countless mee ngs between the fi lmmakers and Weta Digital, which took place over the be er part of a year.
While Elliot is en rely computer-generated, he is s ll a fully-fl edged character in the story, and someone whom Pete—and hopefully the audience—grow to care for a great deal. Elliot’s presence allows Pete to be able to fi gure out what he needs, in a narra ve sense, and he ins nc vely understands what’s missing in Pete’s life and that he belongs somewhere else.
A key objec ve from day one was to really sell the idea of a friendship between a child and an animal and to show how special that bond can be. But writer/director David Lowery wanted audiences at fi rst to be uncertain about Elliot and his inten ons.
Says Bryce Dallas Howard, “Elliot is not like other dragons. He’s playful and innocent and the ul mate best friend, and all he really wants is a family. He is absolutely massive and has a really ominous presence and has the ability to be fi erce and breathe fi re and fl y, but he is also tender and warm and nurturing and protec ve.”
For the fi lm’s Oscar® nominated visual eff ects supervisor, Weta Digital’s Eric Saindon (“The Hobbit” fi lms and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy), it presented him with quite a challenge. He explains, “It’s easy to make dragons look scary and it’s easy to make them look cartoony, but we didn’t want either of those for this dragon. We wanted him to have a lot of character so that everyone comes out of the theater in love with him.”
“Elliot has a personality which is unique in terms of dragons we have seen on screen before,” adds producer Jim Whitaker. “Some mes we see him as poten ally dangerous, but other mes he is absolutely lovable.”
Instead of the scaly rep le look, Lowery wanted to go in the complete opposite direc on and asked Weta to come up with designs for an en rely new dragon. “David wanted more of a mammalian-looking creature, albeit, one that was very large,” says Saindon.
Saindon and the team at Weta began their crea ve process by reviewing many diff erent species in the animal kingdom to analyze their movements. “We based our anima on, in part, on references to animals like dogs, cats, lions and monkeys,” he says, “But we also felt a certain obliga on to honor the animated Elliot from the 1977 fi lm in some ways.”
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